The Hour's Getting Late
by zarqa
Summary: Started as a Homeland fic, edited, expanded somewhat and posted here to get some eyes of BSGers, hoping you'll like a glimpse of Kara Thrace in 21st century Los Angeles. R & R away. All comments greatly appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

The minute Jack McAllister introduces Carrie Mathison to her new partner, the air in the room thickens and grows cold. Kara Thrace examines Carrie with hooded eyes and frowns. Carrie looks up at Kara standing over her and her eyes go momentarily soft searching Kara's face. She notes the anger in Kara's glare, stops searching and straightens in her seat. As the two grudgingly shake hands, Jack turns to the keyboard on the conference table, punches some keys, and a dossier flashes up on the wall-mounted screen.

"Wish I could give you two the chance to get acquainted, but there's work to be done. We need eyes and ears on this guy ASAP. One Tavindish McSid. Fucker has alluded all efforts at electronic surveillance so I'm going to need you two to do things the old-fashioned way: grab some coffee and donuts and stake him out."

Carrie shoots Kara a "get a load of this clown" look. In response, Kara relaxes her frown a tiny bit. After gathering all the specifics on the case against McSid, they venture out to their vehicle.

Kara asks, "Shotgun?"

"Sure. I've always loved driving in this crazy town."

Kara senses the sarcasm and responds equally sarcastically. "My brother told me how wired you always were. Always on, never a dull moment."

Carrie flashes to the image of Kara's brother, Gai. His hands taking hers and, with a gentle firmness, moving up her forearms in an effort to slow her down. She remembers the warmth of his grip and the miraculous way it would make her pause and breathe. As she buckles into the driver's seat, she briefly wraps her arms around herself and murmurs, "Yeah, your brother did know that about me very well."

They drive in silence to the location the suspect was last seen, a brownstone storefront in an industrial part of the city. Carrie parks the car outside the front entrance and fidgets in her seat not able to calm her jittery legs.

"Waiting is the hardest part, yeah?" Kara is bemused at Carrie's nervousness.

Carrie motions to the glove compartment. "Open that up and check if I've got something in there."

"What, is Cagney taking downers? Is this something the job should know?" Kara opens the glove compartment and finds several three packs of Trader Joe's dark chocolate bars with almonds. She laughs, tears open the wrapper, and snaps off half the bar for herself before handing it to Carrie.

Carrie takes a firm bite. With a mouth full of chocolate, she says "Yeah, I'm sure Jack totally needs to know about this. Go ahead and write me up Lacey." She glances sideways at Kara and is visibly relieved that Kara seems to have loosened up a bit since their first meeting in the office.

Kara retrieves binoculars from the glove compartment and examines the windows of the building. "Doesn't look like much activity, for now. Not even shadows. We may be here a while."

They both relax and settle in for what may be a long stakeout. Carrie quips, "Maybe we should have picked up some donuts after all." She looks over at Kara for some response but sees that her face has returned to the tightness she had back in the office. "Hey, I didn't have a chance to ask you back there, but are you okay? Working with me, I mean?"

"Why would I not be? You mean because my twin brother off'ed himself over the broken heart you left him with?"

Carrie smarts from the blow and inhales deeply to get rid of the sting. "Yeah, that."

"Look, it's a job. I'm doing my job," Kara says.

"We can talk about it if you want. Clearly, you're still angry."

"You think?"

"Okay, we don't have to talk about that. But let's just talk about your brother for a bit. I'm guessing not many folks want to talk about him with you. And I do. That is, if you want to."

Kara relaxes somewhat and quietly says, "Okay…Yeah, you're right no one seems to want to talk about him anymore. I guess people think not talking about him will make what happened less real or he'll somehow be less gone. But it doesn't really work like that, does it. So, yeah, let's talk about him."

Carrie breathes a sigh of relief. "So I never got a chance to ask Gai about his name. Tell me, where did your parents come up with names like Gai Baltar and Kara Thrace?"

"Not surprised he didn't tell you. He hated the story," Kara says.

She continues, "Our mother visited a sweat lodge in the Southwest. She came across this ancient tribe of Geminons who believed they'd been alive for thousands of years, lived in this state of remembering all their past lives and living them all at the same time. She had a peyote-fueled vision and heard the names Kara Thrace and either Gaius or Gaeta. Anyway, two years later when she got knocked up and found out she was having twins, the names came back to her. Apparently Kara Thrace was some ancient kickass freedom fighter, so, being the romantic fool she was, that name was a no-brainer for her girl. And Mom vaguely remembered that Gaius was sort of the antithesis to a freedom fighter, a man totally out for himself, but she loved the name. Then she heard the name Gaeta and, according the Geminons who remembered it all, he was a pretty okay dude who called Gaius out on his shit...his remarkable talent for self-preservation…so she decided to combine the names to come up with a name for my brother, making him sort of a twin within a twin."

Carrie nods. "Very cool. I think I would've liked your mother."

"Yeah, you would have. She was crazy as hell."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"Gai told me a lot about you, you know," Kara says. Her tone is almost taunting, as if she has some knowledge that Carrie wouldn't want her to have.

Carrie doesn't take the bait. "Great, then there's no need for formalities with us getting to know each other."

Kara eyes Carrie with a flash of respect. Chick is just as smart as Gai said, she thought.

"Did you love him? Because he really totally was in love with you. You know that right?"

"Of course, I know that. I mean I knew that. And I loved him just as much as I was able to love anyone after…" Carrie's throat is suddenly full of something that wouldn't allow any more words to come out.

"Gai told me about Brody," Kara states flatly. "Hell, he couldn't stop talking about you, you know? He shared all the gory details."

"Look, are you saying I took your brother away from you in some way? Because if you are, then that certainly was never my intention. We enjoyed each other's company. I didn't ask for anything more. I didn't want anything more. Truth be told, I am incapable of even handling anything more."

"Yeah, well, more happens all on its own doesn't it."

Growing tired of the passive aggressive accusations, Carrie shrugs and bites off some more chocolate. She gazes out the window and her mind goes back to Kara and Gai's mother. Do our parents know our stories before we live them? Did Kara and Gai's mother know that Gai's mind would split into two and eventually break? Or did the fact that he was named after two people with opposite personalities contribute to the break? And the fact that he was named after someone the polar opposite of Kara's namesake: what did that do to the relationship between him and Kara?

Carrie shakes her head as if to clear all the unanswerable questions in there. Kara seems to have some unanswered questions about her brother too, but trying to engage on that topic will have to wait for another time.

Carrie thinks back to her time in Palestine as station chief for the CIA. She was the youngest station chief ever to come out of the agency. And she thinks of how it was all lost by a stupid mistake.

There she was reveling in her job as the head of the office in Palestine, as usual putting all of herself into her work. Then one day, while Carrie was casing a girl's school for a would-be asset, an embedded journalist snapped some pictures. The journalist may or may not have been working on a story about girl's education in Palestine, but, whatever the case, he was snapping pictures and before vetting the pictures with anyone and even before writing it all up into a nice Pulitzer ready article, the journalist thought that one particular shot didn't warrant publication, he thought it lacked a certain quality of "real" journalism, so what does he do? He sloppily posted it to his personal Facebook instead. And there was Carrie's face plastered on the guy's very non-private Facebook page, his "friends" asking who was that blond among all the Palestinian girls.

Of course, the journalist had no clue, but the picture got attention and spread and was shared among friends and friends of friends until eventually the blond was identified as a CIA agent. Not just any CIA agent, but the one who had given it all up for a terrorist Marine and still managed to not only stay employed by the CIA but had been promoted to station chief. The picture and her name spread and spread and before anyone had the chance to reign it in and spin it to maintain Carrie's and the CIA's cover, she was outed. The job she loved and deserved was gone and she was back stateside, working at a dank office in LA. One step up and two steps back seemed to be the motto of Carrie's career. But what choice did she have? She loved the job. And it's no secret, you'll go through brimstone and fire for love.

Kara glances over at Carrie and marvels at this wound up spool of flaxen energy who was now her partner. She remembers Gai's wide-eyed description of his new girlfriend. He had told Kara that he's never met a woman so single-mindedly devoted to her work. Kara had heard about Carrie's history with the CIA and the terrorist Marine. Kara remembers well warning Gai that she didn't sound stable. But Gai was already hooked.

Now, working with Carrie herself, Kara sees a bit of what Gai must have seen in her. Her brother's fantasy come true. Carrie wasn't attractive simply due to the great love she had for the irreparably damaged Marine Nicholas Brody, although that was pretty spectacular. Carrie embodied the fantasy of a woman, or any person really, having a job that they're willing to give their life for. An all-consuming mission that requires their every waking thought. When Gai met her, he saw her going home, when she had to, to an empty house with no real food in the frig. But, really, when you have a job that sweeps you away so completely, what more do you need but a well-stocked wine cabinet and a warm bed. Gai loved that about her. He envied her commitment to her work. She'd only go home when it was absolutely necessary to get some shut eye and then she'd be right back at work.

Carrie had shared with Gai that she had told Brody to leave his wife and children and be with her, and she wanted it so completely, but only for that moment. She knew that, really, settling down with Brody was the last thing that'd make her happy. Brody was supposed to be just drunken sex. A temporary lapse, a brief reprieve from the grind. But he became more, as love does, all on its own, just as Kara had said. No planning or prodding or subterfuge and machinations needed. That he was her target had nothing to with her falling for him. Love doesn't care about who's the agent and who's the terrorist, who's good, who's bad...morally ambivalent force of a thousand suns that it is. Brody did satisfy her on many levels, but if they had settled into normality, where would that put her job, her need for adventure? She needed Brody for peace, but she needed her work to breathe.

Kara realizes that maybe being angry with Carrie wasn't the best way to process the grief she still carried over losing her brother. Was she now, all of a sudden, okay with working with the woman who may have not exactly killed Gai, but certainly lead to his death? No. Kara was not okay with that. But she knew her brother. She knew his illness, the overwhelming sadness that came over him so often throughout his life. Kara knew first-hand how prone to despair her brother was. And she sees, working with Carrie, all he saw in her and also all that must have driven him crazy about her. Carrie was the woman he loved. And maybe, if she gave Carrie a chance, Kara may find some part of her brother that was now lost to her forever.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"So the CIA," Kara ventures. "How'd you manage to get out from under that organization?"

"Long story short, I didn't have much of a choice." Carrie's voice is clipped.

Kara nods and remembers the choices she's made. How she's landed where she has and the dreams of other worlds that still plague her every night.

Kara remembers flight. She wants Carrie to drive the heinous streets of Los Angeles, because cars never felt like enough, like she was meant to drive some other vehicle. What, she doesn't know because she's never driven anything but a car. A bicycle maybe? Lift, drag, and something. She wishes she could remember, but maybe it's better not to. Not to know what else she could be doing in that alternate universe lingering, but ephemeral, like déjà vu somewhere in her mind. What would be the point. She's here now, an agent of good, in a car with this stranger, a woman focused on work,but still also, somewhere in her mind, somewhere else. She looks over to see Carrie's eyes are closed. Power naps, for the win.

Kara looks down at her upper arm and strokes the tattoo there. A wing and a circle. One wing missing its partner. Maybe finding the other wing will give her that sense of flight she needs? What other wing, she asks herself. She can only vaguely remember the sleepless night, filled with scotch and cigars, when she found herself in a tattoo parlor. A parlor? More like a dingy back alley, where she grabbed a stone off the ground and on the wall, drew out the design she wanted, her hand remembering something that her mind didn't: a solo wing in flight embracing a circle. The guy carving it into her skin had asked what it meant, and, of course, she had no answer. The pain of the needle nearly jolted her out of her slurry buzz, but not quite. She paid the guy and walked away humming an old Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix tune.

This one recurring dream she has, both awake and asleep, of flying a vessel unlike anything on earth, some sort of raider, a living breathing creature. In the dream she's flying, vocally repeating the mantra "thrust, lift, gravity, drag" and she's cringing from the smell of the vessel, the smell of organic waste and decay. She always wakes up with the smell still in her nostrils and her mind a jumble with knowledge of aviation that she doesn't remember ever learning anywhere or practicing in her real waking life. In her dream she's the most kick-ass pilot in the galaxy. So how did she end up fighting street crime in Los Angeles?

Long story short, she didn't have much choice. Her brother wanted to be where he could meet other musicians. He was ready to make his music in a city with a lot of venues for playing music. And she had to be where he was, so she followed along. And then he died. She had to find something to do with all the anger and injustice, so she decided to become an officer of the law in Los Angeles.

Carrie interrupts Kara's thoughts. "Did you ever stop to think – are we really making a difference? I mean for the good?"

"Doesn't anyone who works any job think about that at some point?"

"Yeah, but what we do…get the bad guys…who we're never really totally sure are the bad guys until they go to trial. Who may end up off on some technicality anyway. Or be released and 'forgiven' but killed anyway over something entirely different. Does what we do have a point? Or are we pissing in the wind most day?"

Kara sighs. "I don't know Cagney. Does a doctor's work make a difference every day? We know a lawyer's doesn't. Does a teacher's or a parent's? Not every day, sure, but, in general, on average, yes. All work makes a difference. If not necessarily in outcome but just by us doing it. The process, you know? Sometimes it's just about the means, and turning that part of your brain off that dwells on the ends. Us putting ourselves out there in the world makes a difference. Whether we succeed or not or even whether we or anyone knows what success is. Otherwise, why not just crawl under a blanket and never came out."

Carrie frowns. "Yep, that's the temptation every damn day isn't it?

She continues, "Do you remember that massacre that happened out in Bethesda, the one we, I mean the CIA, just barely missed, a mother and her daughter in law bludgeoned. One shot and the other stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle?"

Kara thinks back the headlines a couple years ago. "Yeah, I guess. There were a lot of massacres during that time. But go ahead, make your point."

"Quinn worked the case and he told me all about it. He had to cover up the thing to keep the murderer in play for us, I mean for them, the CIA." Carrie shakes her head at how often her mind and language deceive her into thinking she's still with the CIA. She continues, "So he tells the cop on the scene that it's a matter of national security, you know the spiel."

Even though Kara has no experience working on matters of national security, she knows how often law enforcers and coerced into covering up things for the sake of the greater good, or so they think. She exhales. "Yeah, I know the spiel."

"And the cop. Like he's totally disgusted by the scene and he's all frustrated at the stone wall Quinn is putting up and he asks Quinn: does anything you guys ever not make things worse?"

Kara snorts. "What does Quinn say?"

Beneath a wry smile. Carrie says, "Well, he has no answer, does he. He can't say a damn word to this good decent cop who just wants to bring a little bit of justice to his little corner of town. He clams right up just like he's trained to do. Just like all of us, I mean them, they, in the company are trained to do."

Kara nods. "So, you're wondering if what we do makes things worse?"

"Yes."

Kara is silent. So Carrie continues, "Look, I just came back from Palestine. So let me give you a hypothetical."

"Wait are you guys allowed to call it Palestine?"

"Yeah, okay, Gaza. So, we know that Americans hire Mossad to spy on Americans for us, right? I mean that happened with Brody and it's happened before with other assets we needed to keep an eye on. We know we can get Mossad to work for us, because who has invested fifty plus years into Israeli intelligence and military, America, that's who. So we know we can cash in that debt any time we want."

Kara nods, "So?"

"Did you ever think that's the formula, the balance sheet, for what's happening to Gaza right now? A crippling, soul-crushing blow to the so-called terrorists via the Israelis. America-funded non-Americans doing our dirty work for us. How many Americans are going to care about a war where no Americans are in danger? Let the Israelis do America's work, on our dime. Meanwhile our hands are cleaner than ever."

Kara shakes her head. Her only knowledge of the Middle East is what she hears on CNN. Nonetheless, she ventures her own theory. "Or…we never got the full story from the other side? Maybe the people of Gaza are starting to think Hamas wasn't such a good idea for leadership after all? These leaders got wind of the sentiments on the street and decided that maybe democracy is not such a good idea? Maybe Hamas started firing rockets to get Israel to fire worse at these people on the streets of Gaza. People who were losing faith in Hamas? Maybe it was all some internal shit that we never got the full story about? The point is, do we, will we ever, have the full story? And does it even matter for us to do our jobs?"

"Hell, yes, it matters. It matters to me. I want to know everything, every slimy little detail. How else am I supposed to fix it?

Look, here's another story for the books: The CIA worked through rural healthcare workers, women physicians who deliver immunizations and other routine care to the poorest areas. They used them to get information about Bin Laden's whereabouts in Pakistan. And now, after the CIA got their man and moved on, those healthcare workers are confronted with mistrust and worse in those same areas where they're trying to help people, give women and children the medicines they need. Humanitarian aid, diplomatic aid, economic aid, the CIA sees the whole lot as opportunity for information, for infiltration. Way before the US was hit on 9/11, still, and to the foreseeable future."

"So, what, are we just supposed to let these people go? Let them hurt us again? Shit happens in war Carrie. Shit that never should or would happen otherwise. We can't just sit back and sing kumbaya. Not when we have the most at stake to lose."

"Do we? Do we have the most at stake? What makes my life or your life more significant than the life of a mother who'll lose a child, maybe two or three children, to diseases that are totally preventable?"

"Maybe because, instead of saving one, two, or three people, what we do can save hundreds and thousands? Maybe because the money and the resources and the advancements our country creates and puts out into the world are what keep the damn thing spinning? Someone's gotta police that shit, don't ya think? Why not us?"

"Money? Sure, but only to those corrupt politicians who we can assure will be our tools. Money so that they can invest in their country's infrastructure and people? No, that American tax payer money goes straight to marble palaces, hunting lodges, and fleets of BMW's. Resources? What, like guns? What else do we still produce and export all over the world? Cars? Building supplies? Freakin apparel? Nope, just flame throwers. Advancements? Let's see. Polio vaccine, sure. Followed closely by Baywatch, Bold and the fucking Beautiful, showing everyone all the lives they'll never live, all the worlds that they'll never be citizens of. Unless they come to America. Come into the arms of America, that hallowed ground that only a few will tread, to work their asses off driving our cabs, cooking our food, pumping our fucking gas, just to have the chance to send a kid or two to school, give their kids some hope for a better future than what they had in their corrupt cesspool hell of a country."

"Good God, you are cynical. What the hell Carrie, what do you want me to tell you? That you're right? That you've just rattled off all the reasons that so much of the world fraking hates us at the very same instant of wanting to be us? Yes, you are right. But you gotta do what you can with what you have. Right? Isn't that the only way to get up and get to work every day? Somehow believe that what you're doing is right. Do no fraking harm, not on purpose, at least. Negotiate and mediate so that, at the end of the day, the lesser evil has a chance to win."

Kara looks away, exhausted. "Maybe wanting to fix it all single-handedly is the problem, Carrie. Do you want to end up where my brother is?"

Carrie jerks her head toward Kara, confused. "Gai was a musician. What's he got to do with matters of national security? And did you just say 'fraking'? Twice?"

"I did?" Kara is momentarily perplexed but she shakes her head, refusing to be distracted. "Look, yes, Gai was a musician. Every single thing you just said, every question about all the who's and why's of how the world works, he put all of that into his music. It wasn't brain surgery or hunting spies, but music was the tool he had to work with. His tool for fixing it all. And when he finally, inevitably, realized he couldn't possibly fix anything, that was the end."

Carrie sighs in exasperation. "If that's true, if being driven is always going to lead to destruction, then why work at anything at all?"

"Because it's our job. And we do it piece by fucking piece, one day at a fucking time. Do the work without expecting any one outcome. Do we whatever we can, punch the clock, and call it a fucking day, Carrie."

The car jolts with the sound of shots fired inside the building Carrie and Kara are staking. A man holding a gun runs out.

Kara jumps out of the car to pursue while Carrie phones headquarters.

"Perp has left the building. Officer in pursuit," Carrie dictates to the car radio. "Can you guys give me a visual on my cell?"

"Sure thing." Back at HQ, Dante punches some keys on his computer. "It'll be a second, Carrie. Server's been kind of slow today. I'm opening up another socket."

Carrie slams down the radio device and exits the car. She sees Kara turn a corner behind the building and starts running towards the opposite corner of the building.

Carrie and Kara, both with guns drawn, meet behind the building.

Kara shouts, "Where's our visual?"

"Damn server," Carrie exhales. "Dammit," they say in chorus.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Carrie and Kara walk into HQ, both visibly disturbed. Arms swinging and feet nailing every step, Carrie approaches the desk of their resident IT guru.

"What the hell, Dante? When is this place going to get the resources we need to do our job in the field?"

Dante glances up from his monitor and shrugs. "Beats me, Carrie. Still working it out." He flashes a searching glance to see if that answer satisfies Carrie. Not getting a good read either way, he turns back to his monitor. Jack descends the stairs from his office and approaches Dante's desk and hands him a sheath of paper. Dante glances at it, shakes his head in frustration, looks up at Carrie's now easily readable angry face, and turns back to this monitor.

Carry turns her attention to her boss. "Jack, we sat out there for hours, had the guy in sight, then we lose him because of a server mishap?"

"It happens," Jack shrugs. "Look, we've got some intel that he may be at this hotel. He checked in with a bag so he may be there for a while. Why don't you guys check it out."

"Sure, it's not like we haven't already spent most of today in a car," Kara says.

"Damn LA," adds Carrie.

They both stomp back out of the office.

As Carrie punches the hotel address into her GPS, Kara asks, "So what's the story with this McAllister guy? Doesn't quite have the look for spy-hood."

Carrie's frustrated frown briefly melts into a lascivious grin, "Yeah, he is kind of pretty isn't he?" "Exactly. Not one to get dirty when the need arises," Kara states. "Well, he used to be a lawyer for the mob in Chicago." Kara grin matches Carrie's. "Chicago has a mob?" They both laugh. Carrie continues, "Yeah, he was apparently adopted by a mobster, taken in as an orphan, turned, so to speak, to the life of defending his father-figure boss. Even married the boss's daughter and had a couple kids with her. But at one point he found himself wavering, I guess. Had an affair with the DA's wife. Shit hit the fan. And here he is. You know how the agency likes to nab those who walk that line between hero and criminal. Intelligence work is all about being able to get inside the heads of the bad guys." "And who better to do that than someone who's been on that side," Kara finishes Carrie's thought. She clears her throat and almost whispers, "So this DA's wife he had the affair with? Is she still around?" "I have no idea Kara," Carrie smiled. "And it may serve you well to not dwell on such matters. He's our boss, remember." Through gritted teeth, Kara brushes off Carrie's concerns. "Yeah, yeah. What about the wife?" "She, I know, is history. Moved on almost immediately. He's been estranged from the kids as well. Son is doing time for murder. And daughter is off living her own life." "Hm."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Can you believe this crap? Like we have nothing better to do than drive around chasing after a ghost." Carrie is exasperated.

"Right? I know I'd rather be getting my nails done." Kara's tone is facetious in an attempt to allay Carrie's frustration.

Carrie snorts out a laugh. "Well, this hotel where this Tavendish McSid is holed up does have a nice spa. Let's see what we can manage."

They walk into the hotel and approach the front desk. Carrie flashes her badge at the clerk and nods when he gives her McSid's room number. They move towards the elevator and Kara nearly trips over a maintenance guy working over an array of tools spread out all over the elevator lobby. All four elevator doors are open, exposing cement shafts and cables.

"Wow. Really? All four broke down at the same time?" Kara chuckles. "What are the odds?"

"Great," Carrie states flatly. "Well, the guy in on the 25th floor. Want to hoof it up the stairs?"

"Not particularly, no."

"Didn't think so."

The two women return to the hotel lobby and stand around at a loss on how to proceed. They are approached by a well-dressed young man holding a clipboard.

"Hello, ladies. How are you today?"

Carrie and Kara both glare at the boy. He clears his throat and looks down at his clipboard. "If you don't mind me saying, you two look like you may need some down time. Am I right?"

Not seeing an answer forthcoming, he continues, "Just so happens our spa is having a special today. We're offering the works. Sauna, massage, mani-pedi, the works."

Carrie finally speaks, "That's great. Thanks for the offer, but we're here on business."

"Not so fast Cagney," Kara side whispers to Carrie. "Our business is on the 25th floor, and the elevator is under repair. I believe we may have some time."

Kara turns to the boy, "Show us the way, kid."

Kara walks out of the dressing room in a plush white robe, a couple of sizes too big for her. She flashes a smile at Carrie. "Check it out Cagney. Plushy robes. Like five different kinds of shampoo, and not those dinky trial sizes either."

Carrie rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I'm wondering what HQ is going to think about footing the bill for all of this."

Kara starts rummaging through her purse for something and feels Carrie's eyes still on her. She examines herself in the full length mirror, turns and asks, "What, does this make my butt look big?"

Carrie snorts, "No, you idiot."

She frowns, sighs, and continues, "Your brother, he took us to a fancy hotel like this once. Got a Groupon or something. No special occasion, just wanted to splurge. That entire weekend, we pretty much lived in robes just like that one. He'd say there's something poetic about lovers wearing the same thing, losing the tethers to the world provided by clothing. Becoming blank slates, absorbing and reflecting only each other."

Now it's Kara's turn to roll her eyes. "My brother, the poet." Her face pinches. "And thanks for putting that image in my head. Of the two of you rolling around in nothing but robes." She throws Carrie her version of the same robe. While Carrie goes to change, Kara fishes out a cigar from her purse and proceeds to light up.

Now dressed in her own robe, Carrie looks at Kara and her eyes grow wide. "Easy there, Starbuck. This is a non-smoking suite."

Kara scoffs, "So I'll crack open a window." As she walks across the room, she turns and asks, "Starbuck? Just how old are you, referring to a show that only lasted a year in the late 70's?"

Carrie's face opens in a radiant smile. She feels her face cracking open, cell by cell. Such a strange feeling to smile after so long. She lowers her gaze, remembers, and the smile fades bit by bit.

Meanwhile, Kara stands at the window savoring her cigar. She takes a puff, examines the shaft, and returns it to her mouth.

This time Carrie laughs a full gut laugh. "Easy there, Lacey. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Heads turn as Carrie and Kara return to HQ. Both women appear gloriously refreshed and the boys in the office can't help but notice.

As Jack approaches, all heads quickly turn back to work.

"No luck with McSid, eh?"

"Look, Jack, nothing's going on with this guy, and I'm not even sure he is our guy, so, yeah, no luck with McSid." Carrie voice is clipped.

"We did hear gunshots at the last place, but, alright, I'm leaning towards trusting your instincts on this one, Carrie. Let's call it a night for now and regroup tomorrow." Jack's eyes dart from Kara to Carrie, land on Carrie, and start melting like chocolate left on a dashboard in the middle of August.

"I was headed down to the pub for a brew. You ladies care to join me?"

The women look at each other, Carrie puzzled and Kara grinning lasciviously.

Carrie says, "I don't know. I thought I'd sit somewhere and write up this surveillance detail we just pulled while it's still fresh in my mind."

"I'm up for a drink!" Kara quickly adds. Carrie can't help but snort at her new friend's impulsive obviousness.

Jack shrugs and looks disappointedly at Carrie. "Alright then, paperwork it is then for Carrie." He turns to Kara, "My car is downstairs."

* * *

Jack and Kara find a couple of spots at the bar and Jack motions to the bartender.

"Tequila Revolucion, silver, no lime, please." He turns to Kara.

"Bourbon, straight," Kara says to the bartender. Then, she smiles back at Jack. "You know you just ordered Carrie's drink?"

"Is that right? Well, it's always been clear liquor for me." Jack looks to his hands and grins. "So you're a bourbon drinker, eh? Always tasted like gasoline to me."

"Hm," Kara smiles at the fact that Jack unknowingly just mimicked Carrie's opinion on bourbon.

The drinks arrive and Kara takes a deep swig. Meanwhile, Jack swirls his glass to catch the light in the liquor. The light is reflected back into his brown eyes and he finally takes a sip.

"So I felt a little tension this morning when I introduced you two. Looks like you and Carrie worked that out?"

"Oh, yeah." Kara waves Jack's observation away. "We've got some tough history but we ironed it all out riding together today."

"Frankly, I don't know much about Carrie myself. Just what I've heard about her time in the CIA," Jack says quietly.

Kara shifts in her chair wondering when the topic of conversation will turn away from Carrie. "She's okay. A bit high-strung, but totally professional about working the job she's given."

"Hard to imagine our crepuscular little office in Los Angeles compares in excitement to the international espionage to which she's accustomed."

"Well, we all landed here from somewhere else, didn't we," Kara states flatly. Crepuscular? Not sure she can keep up with this guy, vocabulary-wise. She finishes her drink and motions to the bartender. "A shot and a beer please. Whatever microbrew you have in a bottle is fine."

Jack glances at his watch and notes that it's still early in the evening. He looks over inquisitively at Kara's empty glass and then back at her. "You want to tell me more about the history you and Carrie share? It may inform the way she works among us pencil pushers."

Kara snorts at his formality. Clearly he's here to talk about one thing: Carrie. She snaps impatiently, "No, not really. Like I said, we worked it all out."

Kara is starting to feel the effects of the bourbon she has guzzled down. Not detecting any interest from Jack, she figures she may as well get a good buzz on and enjoy the evening anyway. "Why don't we talk about your history? You came here from Chicago? What was that like?"

"What, moving from Chicago or living in Chicago?" Jack stares back at his hands and briefly fingers his bare ring finger, impulsively turning a phantom ring. He doesn't wait for Kara's answer. "Well, the weather is certainly nicer here."

"Is that a little Irish brogue I detect?"

"Yes, it is. My family landed in Chicago from Dublin when I was a kid," Jack says. He frowns and coughs. Straightening his back on the bar stool, he takes a deeper swig of his tequila.

Kara notes that Jack is not at all comfortable with her line of questions. But, since the bourbon has kicked in and the shot has also arrived and been consumed, she sees no point in diplomacy now.

She continues, "And you were orphaned and raised by that big land developer, what was his name, was in all the papers a while back."

"Wow, gossip travels fast in our little corner of the world," Jack says. He inhales deeply and his jaw tenses.

Jack continues, "Yes, his name was Thatcher Karsten. I guess you already know how that ended?"

"Yeah, a penthouse office, bullet to the brain?" Kara states flatly.

"Exactly. So, yeah, not much keeping me in Chicago after that. So here I am."

Kara is not ready to let Jack end the story there. "There was a woman, the DA's wife?"

Jack sighs and turns away from Kara to look out the window. Twilight is just beginning to descend on the city. Smog levels have been record high so the sunset promises to be spectacular. "Have you noticed how the sun takes so long to set in LA? In Chicago I remember it was light one minute and dark the next. Here the light seems to hang on forever, not wanting to die."

Kara turns her gaze to where Jack is looking and her eyes momentarily soften. "Yes, I have noticed that." She turns back to her drink and straightens up. "Or maybe it's because here we're always looking for a sunset. The same sunset we never paid much attention to back east."

"So you're from the east too?"

"Something like that," Kara says, anxious to get back to the topic Jack so deftly veered them away from. "So this woman. She was married, right? And she stayed married?"

A grin that doesn't travel to his eyes spreads across Jack's face. "Aren't you the persistent one." He shrugs. "Yeah, she stayed married as far as I know."

Man, this is like pulling hen's teeth, Kara thinks. All the bourbon in the world isn't going to give her the patience to try to get him to talk any more openly. Maybe it'd be less frustrating if she took over the talking.

So she starts. "You find it once, maybe twice, in your twenties. How easy it seems and how effortless, gliding along on a force of its own, you're so confident that you'll find it again. You are so sure! Lose this one, it'll happen again. And again. And again. Until you've finally had enough of the giddiness of that high and want the babies. Then you'll settle into life with the high of that moment. But the high will become something else so quickly and you'll wonder where it went. And why. And if you'll ever feel it again…"

Jack finishes off his drink and motions for another. "…someone who makes you feel the magnitude of it all," he says with a faraway tequila-fueled look in his eyes.

While he's waiting for his drink, he passes a hand over his arm, and for a moment, the white fabric of his shirt becomes translucent revealing the dark outline of a tattoo on his upper arm. A wing and a circle. Kara gasps, but manages to continue speaking.

"So you'll hold on to the something else it's become. For the babies. But you'll think back… how can you not?.. and you'll remember that high, that effortless floating along. And, god help you, you'll want it again. You'll think you're entitled. You in your life of privileged abandon, effortless consumption, will want that feeling of being in your twenties again. Will it come back when you search it out? Maybe for a relative second. But mostly it'll be sorted and dirty and hurt. Dirty motel rooms, quick in and out. Hurt everyone around you. So why go there?"

Jack looks over at Kara, seeming to see her for the first time. "And how do you know this? You without a wedding ring, or kids, as far as I know."

Kara takes a swig of beer, her mouth wrapped over the bottle, her eyes focused on Jack's face. "I watch a lot of TV."

* * *

They leave the bar and as they're walking to Jack's car, Kara stops. "You know what, I think I'll try to walk off this buzz."

As he's punching his car fob to open the car, Jack stops and smiles his most open smile of the night, "Seriously? No one walks in LA, you know."

Kara hasn't slowed her gate. She turns and smiles back at Jack. "I'll see you tomorrow, boss."

She starts walking towards the sunset, feeling light headed from the booze, turning her face towards the sky to soak in the last few remaining rays of sun.

She comes to an open green space, a park, with a wrought iron fence separating it from the sidewalk. Inside the park she sees a girl, maybe seven or eight years old, a tow-headed tangle of hair flying from a laughing face. She's wearing a tutu, a deep purple concoction with specks of silver and as she twirls, the specks look like stars spinning in a night sky. She's holding a dream catcher in one hand, twirling it around and around herself, letting the stones in the net catch the light and giggling every time they do. Kara presses her face against the iron gate and looks closely at the girl's face.

The girl's face is a mirror image of Kara's own.

Startled, Kara takes a step back and shakes her head to clear her eyes of the illusion. When she looks back into the park, the girl is gone.

Kara turns on her heel and quickly proceeds to walk away from the park. Her steps have gotten more wobbly as more of the alcohol has hit her brain. She decides to take a brief reprieve on a bench to catch her breath. In an attempt to bring focus back to her eyes, she closes them tightly and presses her palms to them to keep them closed. Behind her closed eyes she catches flash-like glimpses of herself in bed in a room that looks like a hospital room, but from the 50's. Wrought iron beds, painted avocado green, a radiator dripping under a large double paned window, sun glaring through the window as she blinks and tries to see the figure of a man standing above her. A man in a white coat, liquid brown eyes, his eyes so gentle but so cold, his face rigid and unsmiling.

And she remembers tubes everywhere and the feeling of trying to get up but being tied to the bed with all the tubes. Her feet in stirrups, an ultrasound screen with conical shadows, beating, reverberating with her every breath. Then, a sharp pain in her abdomen as she attempts to move. Her hand going down to her belly, her fingers tracing a gash covered by bandages. Hearing herself say, what the hell, where am I, who are you, desperate to regain control and get some answers from the brown-eyed man standing over her. Him shushing her, injecting something into her IV, shushing her again and gently trying to calm her, his hand on her arm, warm but somehow metallic. The brown of his eyes, so warm, but his face still cold, devoid of all emotion.

Kara grabs her temples and leans over to get blood flowing back to her head. She rises slowly back to seated position and is relieved to find that the visions are gone. She gets up off the bench and continues walking. As she nears the end of the block, she stops to wait for the crosswalk light. She turns to look up the intersecting street, empty but for one parked car. Something is catching the light inside the car, obscuring her full view of it. She squints and gingerly walks towards the light.

As she gets closer, the sun's reflection no longer blinds her, and she sees that the car is a total wreck, front end smashed, headlights hanging by thread-like wires, black holes all over the body of the car, with ash and smoke rising from them, as if the vehicle has been in an explosion. She looks at the plates and then closer at the make of the car.

It's her own car.

The sunlight catches something hanging behind the cracked windshield and she gets even closer. Hanging from the rearview mirror are a set of dog tags, hexagonal. As she steps even closer, she sees etched on the dog tags the name Kara Thrace.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: The last chapter folks. Would love to hear whatever feedback you can send my way. Thank you for reading!_

**Chapter 7**

Carrie sits frowning over her laptop punching keys and looking bored. Her frustration soon reaches a breaking point and she rapidly gets up, rolling her seat back so it hits the wall behind her desk. As she marches out of her office into the large cubicle bank in the middle of headquarters, she sees that all the chairs are empty, computer screens flashing generic screen savers. She keeps walking and notices the shadows of her colleagues crowded together into an office down the hall.

It's the video screening room.

"Must be movie night," she sighs as she continues her march, fully prepared to let the idiots have it for wasting company time.

As she gets closer to the office door, she hears chanting, many voices screaming out in what sounds like Farsi. The chant sounds familiar, a popular phrase in Farsi heard often whenever she was in Iran, words barely needing translation, "Death to the infidel, death to America."

Inside the office, Dante points at the screen. "See him tensing his neck, looking around, trying to find her in the crowd?"

Another of the operatives in the room, one who Carrie doesn't recognize, chimes in, "Why didn't they put a hood over his head like civilized people do when they're hanging somebody?"

"They wanted the world to know it was really him," Dante suggests. "Or maybe they offered him a hood and he refused it. Maybe _he_ wanted the world to know it was him."

His voice softens to a whisper as he continues speculating. "And maybe he wanted to be able to see her one last time."

The random agent says, "What a sick fuck for wanting her there."

Jack appears between the screen and the agents watching it. "Maybe he told her not to come, and, knowing her, knew she would anyway. And, when she called to him, he heard her voice, and had to try to find her, to see her one last time."

He turns back to the computer and switches off the video. "Don't you all have anything better to do this fine day?"

Outside the room, as yet unseen by her co-workers, Carrie is livid with rage. Corpuscles of emotion appear ready to burst all over her face, engorged with blood. Until he spoke, Carrie had not realized that Jack was in the room too, watching right along with the rest of them, gawking at the worst thing that ever happened to her. Her hands balled up in fists, Carrie gears herself up to burst into the room, to call out these idiots on their gossiping like a bunch of old men. How can she continue working with these people? How can she trust colleagues who have shown such insensitivity to the trauma she faced when she witnessed Brody's death? How can they gawk so callously at what she went through, what she lost?

The rhetorical questions teem in her mind and she decides to pause. Is confronting them really worth it? The entire world gawks at tragedy. Everyone loves tragedy, they get off on it. They don't want to, but they do. And eventually, no one pays any mind to the real human lives connected to all that tragedy. The gawking takes on a life of its own, and there's no stopping it. She winces from the sting of the realization and quickly walks past the screening room before anyone sees her.

* * *

After taking several brisk laps around her building, Carrie finds herself once again able to breath without having to choke back the emotion. She comes back in to HQ to find Jack and Dante huddled together over Dante's desk in the cubicle bay.

Despite having cooled down, she still doesn't want to see them or talk to them so she makes an attempt to creep by without them noticing. She still manages to hear bits of their conversation.

"…single-minded, thinking no further than the mission," Carrie hears Jack say. "Even saving Brody, this grand love that came out of nowhere, something she had no control over, even that was a mission.

"What she never gets is that there's always a trade-off. One mission succeeds, another fails. Especially in a world so convoluted, so connected, so over-populated with liars that everything is one big web of lies and connections. One domino falling leading to another and another. The cycle of missions, episodes, seasons going on until someone in power decides to focus energy and funding elsewhere."

Carrie watches Dante thoughtfully absorbing what Jack is telling him. Dante says, "Single-mindedness gets the job done, but is it a good trait for long term survival?"

Jack shrugs. "Who knows? Maybe she's over it. Maybe she's ready to move on. The difference between love and a mission is that you can say goodbye to a mission. Maybe she knows she has to say goodbye. Even if it kills her to do it."

Just when she was sure she was able to tamp down the pain enough to come back to work, after hearing her boss and close colleague talk about her as if she's a mental patient, Carrie realizes she has to leave again. Her knees can barely withstand her weight and she steadies herself on the wall of the hallway as she walks straight back out of HQ.

* * *

Carrie steps out into the light of day, momentarily blinded by the strong midday sun. She pats her pockets for her sunglasses but realizes she's left them in her office. The sun pounds on her head and she puts a hand up to keep the glare out of her eyes so she can continue walking. She knows the rapid beat of her heart, her inability to focus or stay still, coupled with what she has just witnessed in her office, could lead to a manic episode. She usually plugs her ears with music when she senses these heightened states coming on. Thelonius Monk or Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, blaring at top volume directly into her ears, into her brain, into her blood. Thinning out the damn crazy-making chemicals, those sick little neurotransmitters that find a way free from the lithium she's always tried to take regularly. But, like her sunglasses, her music is also back at the office. And so her head continues to pound and she continues to walk.

She passes by a store window and from the corner of her eyes she sees a reflection. A tall man, standing rod straight, at attention, like a Marine. She shakes it away from her mind and keeps walking.

But her mind goes to her Marine. Nicholas Brody. A body like a bullet. All clean gun metal shine, freckles vaguely gold tinged, and the rumble just beneath the surface, of sinewy knots moving, shifting, then deeper still, a core of pure gun powder. Silt nascent sparks. Gun powder, Carrie remembered from her forensics class, looked like coffee or dirt, until you smelled it, and there it was inside him, invisible, not noticeable at all, until he made you feel it.

She closes her eyes and sees pale blue.

Carry knows that ultimately, the gun powder was all that was there. Otherwise, Brody was empty. A vessel for various people to put their crap into. Jessica to put her little house and family into, ignorant of the fact that he was still gone even after he came back. His captors to put pain, sorrow, loss, insurmountable destruction into. Brody reached out for faith, any faith, and maybe he found some to keep going, but mostly, he went through the motions of living. Brainwashed to pursuing a revenge that wasn't even completely possible. An eye for an eye leaving the whole world blind. A soldier in an interminable war fueled by hate.

Carrie's mind goes back to being handcuffed to a pipe in a warehouse near Fairfax Virginia. Highway 50, east of Chantilly. Her little conversation with Nazir about ethics. He'd told her: _it may take a century, two centuries, three centuries, but we will exterminate you._ The hate would burn strong until all things Western were destroyed. Brody was a vessel for that hate. When she had Nazir's attention, Carrie should have asked him, then what of your god? If you believe the West and all it stands for should fall, and you believe that God also wants that, why not just let Him do it? If you are so bent on our destruction, why not let time and fate, trust in God, to destroy us? Or don't you have faith that God Himself will do as he's ordered you to do?

Brody wasn't the typical Marine, all pomp and spine. Of course, as per his training, his demeanor was predictably detached, his officer stance still focused, even when he was at home, on doing a soldier's job: getting out alive. Something about his movements, though, something about the way he carried himself, was always more personal. A phantom of something more personal. Like despite being a Marine, despite being deserted and left for dead, despite being beaten and turned, there was still a shred of something human left, a shred he built a nest of straw around. Of course, no one really saw that shred of humanity but Carrie.

Carrie blinks away tears. And she hears music. Not the chaotic jazz she needs to give order to her whirling chaotic thoughts. This is a woman's voice. A cover of a Velvet Underground song. Her voice, throaty and rough, like it's sung through dirt. And exceptionally sad.

_Sometimes  
Sometimes I get so sad  
Sometimes I feel almost heavenly but  
Lately I just feel bad  
Yeah, baby, I just feel mad  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

_It was good what we did yesterday  
And I'd do it again  
The fact that you're insane  
Only proves that you're my best friend  
Well, I will never fuck anyone else again  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

_Thought of you as my mountain top  
I thought of you as my peak  
Thought of you as everything  
I had and I couldn't keep  
Yeah, that I had but I couldn't keep  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

_You explode inside of me  
Yeah you explode my heart  
I never had nothing anywhere so  
the end is where I start  
Cause I'm real and that's all that matters  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes  
Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

Now the tears are flowing freely and Carrie struggles to keep walking, away from her office, away from that song, away from her memories and the lingering thoughts of the man she loved so mindlessly and completely. Blinded by the sun and by her tears, she stumbles on. She hears her name. Thinking it's yet another thing that's circling around just in her mind, she keeps stumbling. She hears her name again.

"Carrie!" It's Kara. "What are you doing? The office is this way."

Kara looks like she's seen better days: layers of clothing seemingly put together blindly, combat boots, aviator sunglasses barely covering dark circles around bloodshot eyes, her skin pale and translucent, exposed. She sees Carrie's tear-streaked face and puts an arm gently around her shoulders, not saying another word.

They walk like that for a bit and pass another storefront. This time the music is very different. Again a cover, but this time of a Bob Dylan song. Jimi Hendrix's version of it. The women stand together and listen, entranced.

_"There must be some kind of way out of here, "  
Said the joker to the thief,  
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.  
Business men – they drink my wine  
Plowmen dig my earth  
None will level on the line  
Nobody of it is worth."_

_"No reason to get excited, "_  
_The thief – he kindly spoke,_  
_"There are many here among us_  
_Who feel that life is but a joke_  
_But you and I we've been through that_  
_And this is not our fate_  
_So let us not talk falsely now_  
_The hour's getting late."_

_All along the watchtower_  
_Princess kept the view_  
_While all the women came_  
_And went, bare-foot servants too_  
_Outside in the cold distance_  
_A wild cat did growl_  
_Two riders were approaching_  
_And the wind began to howl, hey._


End file.
